Category: crafty

Every now and Neko begs to do a "project", which is awesome except for that whole part about me being sort of chronically tired and uninspired.

Thank goodness for the internet.

I wandered around a few sites and found a project for which we had all the ingredients, Homemade Slime. Now, I'd put it more in the category of Silly Putty than slime, but regardless of category, the kids were fascinated from the creation to hours later when they were still playing with it.

Hooray for science!

I ordered this dollhouse holiday decoration kit a while back, and have been waiting to crack it open with Neko. I had to find the perfect time when Shep was napping and Ellery was fairly content, because it’s a project that’s only suitable for ages 4 and up.

Today was the day. Shep napped, Ellery played in the pack-n-play, and Neko and I decorated the Playmobil house. She was fascinated by the little lights we strung on the house and the tiny stockings we hung by the chimney.

Okay, maybe Tom and I were a little excited about it, too.

I’ve been meaning to do this project for a while now, but when Shep and I had an hour to kill this morning, it seemed like a good time to crack it out.

A bowl of lentils and a bunch of kitchen items can produce all kinds of pouring, funneling, sifting and organizing.

We had so much fun that I had to put together two additional set-ups for Neko and Chris in the afternoon. (We had to introduce some rice since I was out of lentils.)

If you try this one out, though, be prepared. If your kids are like mine, you’ll need your broom and dustpan when the day is done.

We’ve been really into beads around here. It started as a way to keep Shep busy, but then Neko really got into it, too. Now we’re all sporting some pretty impressive bangles.

Yesterday we picked up a copy of Jessica Seinfeld’s new book, Deceptively Delicious. The whole concept is pureeing veggies and sneaking them into traditional recipes. I’ve done this sort of deception before, shredding carrots and zucchini into muffins and adding some soy protein here and there. But this takes the effort to a whole new level, pureeing veggies ahead of time and storing them in the freezer for regular use.

I still think it’s important to continue to present veggies in their whole form, since I want to continue to encourage the eating of recognizable vegetables, but I am not above a little covert cooking as well. One of my children will happily gobble up just about any veggie, but the other one only eats two vegetables. So Sunday night I spent two hours pureeing. And as I surveyed my results, I have to say that if all those veggies end up in my kids, it was worth the work.

Of course, if you didn’t have time or desire to do all this puree prep work, you could easily just stock jars of baby food, and that would do the trick as well.

Will keep you posted on how I fare down this road…

My aunt took Neko and Shep this morning. As we surveyed the wreckage from the week, our first impulse was to clean the house and catch up on the laundry. But then we threw all sense and reason to the wind and decided to work on our photo wall instead.

Clearly, sometimes you have to make a choice. You can either have a clean house or you can get a big project done. It does not seem possible to get both things accomplished without some sort of time travel.

Unfortunately, we got about halfway done and then we realized that half the frames are in one of the 86 boxes in the basement. But the 60% we got up? They look fabulous. That is, if you can see past the clutter and mounds of laundry.

Photos of the photos to be posted when the project is complete.

Right before Ellery was born, I stocked up on some cheap pre-packaged crafts that I could pull out on some random afternoon when I had nothing left. This afternoon was one of those days, so I pulled out the Rubber Ball Making Kit I got from Target.

This was great, becuase it was something both Neko and Shep could do. They give you this plastic mold and four colors of crystals. You layer the crystals in whatever pattern you like, and then pop the mold in a cup of cold water for two minutes. Then take it out of the water and let it sit for three minutes. Then out of the mold and let it dry (which only took about 30 minutes).

For the rest of the afternoon Neko, Shep, and Chris were bouncing their balls all over my parents’ house. I give the kit a big thumb’s up.

Ed Emberly was one of the greatest influences on my life. Hands down. By breaking down objects into lines and simple shapes, he showed us that anyone could draw. I knew Chris would be a friend for life, when we discovered we both owned dog-eared copies of his books in our childhood.

This week Tom picked up Ed Emberley’s Complete Funprint Drawing Book, and Neko has been mezmerized. By starting with a simple fingerprints, she’s been crafting all kinds of characters based on his instructions (above: frog, bird, person, fish).

Once she gets this under her belt, we’ll crack out Make A World, which ranks among my most favorite books ever.

Day two of Pride went really well. Ellery and I worked for a few hours, sporting her “rainbow friendly” onesie. The day ended perfectly with this hilarious woman who returned in her orange tee just to show us how fabulously it complimented her motorcycle.

We have one more Pride festival to sell at and then we’ll start mulling over the another tee topic—the 2008 Election.